Skip Navigation



Cerebral Cortex Advance Access published online on February 14, 2008
Cerebral Cortex, doi:10.1093/cercor/bhn008
This Article
Right arrow Full Text Freely available
Right arrow FREE Full Text (PDF) Freely available
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
18/10/2391    most recent
bhn008v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Zhang, Z.
Right arrow Articles by Xu, T.-L.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Zhang, Z.
Right arrow Articles by Xu, T.-L.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Bell-Shaped D-Serine Actions on Hippocampal Long-Term Depression and Spatial Memory Retrieval

Zhi Zhang1,2, Neng Gong1,2, Wei Wang3, Lin Xu4 and Tian-Le Xu1,2

1 Institute of Neuroscience and State Key Laboratory of Neuroscience, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200031, China, 2 School of Life Sciences, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230027, China, 3 Jiangsu Center for Drug Screening, China Pharmaceutical University, Nanjing 210038, China, 4 Laboratory of Learning and Memory, Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming 650223, China

Address correspondence to Tian-Le Xu, PhD, Institute of Neuroscience and State Key Laboratory of Neuroscience, Shanghai Institutes of Biological Sciences, The Chinese Academy of Sciences, 320 Yue-yang Road, Shanghai 200031, China. Email: tlxu{at}ion.ac.cn.

D-Serine, the endogenous coagonist of N-methyl-D-aspartate receptors (NMDARs), is considered to be an important gliotransmitter, and is essential for the induction of long-term potentiation. However, less is known about the role of D-serine in another form of synaptic plasticity, long-term depression (LTD). In this study, we found that exogenous D-serine regulated LTD in the hippocampal CA1 region in a "bell-shaped" concentration-dependent manner through regulating the function of NMDARs in the same manner, whereas endogenous D-serine was activity-dependently released and, in turn, contributed to the induction of LTD during low-frequency stimulation. Furthermore, impairing glial functions with sodium fluoroacetate (NaFAC) reduced the magnitude of LTD, which could be restored by exogenous D-serine, indicating that endogenous D-serine is mainly glia-derived during LTD induction. More interestingly, similar to the effects on LTD, exogenous D-serine enhanced spatial memory retrieval in the Morris water maze in a bell-shaped dose-dependent manner and rescued the NaFAC-induced impairment of memory retrieval, suggesting links between LTD and spatial memory retrieval. Our study thus provides direct evidence of the bell-shaped D-serine actions on hippocampal LTD and spatial memory retrieval, and underscores the importance of D-serine in synaptic plasticity, learning, and memory.

Key Words: D-serine • glia • hippocampus • long-term depression • memory retrieval • NMDA receptor


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?


This article has been cited by other articles:


Home page
 Learn. Mem.Home page
V. Labrie, S. Duffy, W. Wang, S. W. Barger, G. B. Baker, and J. C. Roder
Genetic inactivation of D-amino acid oxidase enhances extinction and reversal learning in mice
Learn. Mem., December 30, 2008; 16(1): 28 - 37.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]


Disclaimer: Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.